John Byrne’s Electro redesign was boring and terrible, removing almost any identifying characteristics and changing his color scheme for no reason. One would hope that someone else tasked with redesigning Electro only a year later would go a different way, and Bags certainly did. But this guy… not exactly better. Just a bald guy in a sack that happens to have a lightning bolt cut out. A lot of Ultimate designs skewed more toward the “realistic” or the dreaded word “grounded,” but that wasn’t always in their best interest. At any rate, we open on a bit of a cheat, as all 4 baddies are now trying to attack Spider-Man at once, and he’s no longer got Montana’s rope around his neck. Instead, he’s dodging all these attacks while making with the annoying banter.
Our nimble hero tricks Electro into zapping Ox, while Dan just tries to shoot out of the web and blows up his hand, not needing anyone’s help to look like an idiot, and then Spidey grabs Montana’s rope and yanks him off his feet and into a kick in the face. With the Enforcers down, it’s just spidey and Electro, who dance around a bit as Spider-Man starts trying to get Electro to tell him how he got his powers. Electro is obviously not interested in talking, but Spidey is persistent.
He’s got you there, zappy boy. As the dust settles, our hero is somewhat surprised he’s won. He drops down ot the floor where Ox is laying and tells him if he wants to do one thing right in his life, he’ll go confess everything to the FBI or the cops, and Ox, having been the one showing a lot of second thoughts recently, says “Yeah, ok.” Then Spider-Man starts booking it out of there, but as he reaches the exit, someone says there’s no way in this world he’ll leave here alive.
You couldn’t say you’d ever seen a Spider-Man/Kingpin encounter like this one before!
Kingpin hears Spider-Man say he has something so much better planned from inside his web prison before tearing loose and yelling threats, only to find himself alone. Back in his basement, Peter Parker is going through the discs, and finds the one with his face on it and snaps it in half, well aware of how lucky he got. But that’s not all he was looking for. Then we cut to Ben Urich watching security footage of Kingpin killing Mr. big with his mouth hanging open. Peter Parker is seen sneaking away from dropping the discs off with a note talking about how incriminating they are, no one having seen him.
BIT CREEPY having 15-year old MJ in naught but a towel, guys!
And that’s the ballgame. A satisfying conclusion to this book’s 2nd arc. This book was really cooking by now, and still just getting started. This month’s letter include a missive from Olav Beemer, a guy who got so many letters printed in so many comics, he became kinda famous himself amongst we nerds. He was very much enjoying the series.